The Co-Opticrew has been hard at working sowing the seeds of co-op gaming for weeks on end. We've made the populace aware of as many announcements, patches, and dev videos as humanly possible, and now we reap our just rewards. At least, that's what caused our upcoming extended weekend in my headcanon. It's also possible that this holiday comes pretty consistently every year and our work has extremely little impact on it.

You are not the first Prospect to be chosen… nor will you be the last. The Adal Empire does not yield its secrets easily. Everywhere you see the men and women you once knew; now, they’re husks of their former selves. They are lost. Though their minds are shattered from whatever they’ve encountered here, their strength is unwaveri...

The "Founder's Alpha" for Phoenix Labs' cooperative action-RPG/monster slaying title, Dauntless, has come to a close, but the Closed Beta kicks off later today at 3:00 PM EDT. You will have to buy into it if you're interested in checking it out, with the lowest price of entry being a $40 "Slayer" Founder's Pack.

It looks like Ubisoft is really pushing the ability to fly/drive/boat your way across not-quite-America in The Crew 2. Admittedly, it looks like a lot of fun, assuming everything works as smoothly as you'd hope, and even if it doesn't, there are lots of hijinx to be had in watching your boat slam into the streets of Detroit from 200 yards in the air.

Neocore Games' action RPG, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, is now available via Steam Early Access. The Hungarian developer has some rather lofty goals in sight with this one, such as an "open world" that changes based on the (randomly generated) missions you accept and the choices you make during them.

Headed to Seattle today for PAX West? Wondering how to spend your evening before things kick off tomorrow? Well, maybe you should swing by the Museum of Pop Culture tonight at 8:30 pm PDT for the Nindies@Night event. Nintendo will have a number of indie titles for you to play, including some co-op games like Wulverblade, Huntdown, and the newly announced action-RPG title from Inti Creates, Dragon Marked for Death.

The newest update to Grand Theft Auto V features a number of large changes and improvements to the skies of Grand Theft Auto Online. The DLC is titled “Smuggler’s Run” and adds (inhales deeply to read full list) a new hangar property, new cars, new planes, new clothes and even a new battle royal style game mode.

September will soon be upon us which means the best parts of the year are just around the corner; pumpkin spice everything, Halloween (which seems to be starting mid-August now), crispy and/or crunchy leaves on the ground, caramel corn as well as caramel apples and, best of all, my birthday. September also brings a new batch of free games to celebrate with Xbox’s Games With Gold, though sadly, only one co-op title in the bunch: Battlefield 3.

While the game has been out for some time on the PC and garnered quite a bit of praise and attention, it's only been over the course of the past day that Puuba's rhythm/RPG mash-up, The Metronomicon, has added local co-op functionality. What's more the enhanced version - The Metronomicon: Slay the Dance Floor - is now available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Last fall, HyperX joined the mechanical keyboard market with the debut of their Alloy FPS Mechanical Gaming Keyboard. After an overwhelmingly positive response from gamers and reviewers (you can check out our review here), this summer saw two new versions of the Alloy being announced and released: the Alloy Elite and the Alloy FPS Pro.

Want to try out a bit of Knack 2 for yourself and see if all that talk of "improved action" holds up? Well, good news! There's a free co-op demo of the game available on PSN for Europe, Australia, and the U.S.

The latest news out of last week's Gamescom is related to Warface, the F2P co-op shooter from Crytek Studios. Per their announcement last Thursday, the next batch of free content will take players all the way to Chernobyl to face down all new enemies.